Satan's religion and secret methods

Allah tells us in the Qur'an that satan is the enemy of humanity and that until the end of the world, he will spend all his strength and determination to draw them into evil:

He [satan] said, "My Lord, because You misled me, I will make things on the Earth seem good to them and I will mislead them all, every one of them except Your servants among them who are sincere." (Surat al-Hijr: 39-40)

But some people do not have any knowledge based on true facts about satan. For this reason, they must first learn what they have to do to avoid his enmity; then learn his methods and how to take precautions against his traps—and lastly, how to be prepared against his traps.

The first thing we must understand is that satan has a sense of "religion" he defends for centuries and attempts to get people to accept. From the beginning of history, he has been making the same suggestions, trying to make people all over the world adopt a common lifestyle and accept his false religion. Here are some of this religion's basic characteristics and some of the methods he uses to get people to accept it:

He offers excuses to render the conscience ineffective

Satan's religion is based upon getting people to accept his character and his system of ideas. In order to persuade, he has developed many deceitful methods based on false superstition. But his main philosophy is directed toward disabling the human conscience because, first of all, it tries to ruin his traps and constantly puts suggestions into people's minds, calling them to what is good and true. Allah tells us in the Qur'an that actually, no matter what traps satan sets, every human being is able to perceive the truth, thanks to the guidance of his conscience. "In fact, man will be clear proof against himself. In spite of any excuses he might offer." (Surat al-Qiyama: 14-15) But satan tries to get people to ignore this perception; he has many excuses to get them to shroud their consciences and live according to his morality.

Believers think according to the Qur'an. Therefore, no matter how expert satan's suggestions are in this direction, they immediately perceive them and act according to their consciences. But those who live far removed from the moral teachings of the Qur'an, whose lives are based on pampering their lower selves, immediately accept the excuses that satan offers to incite them. Since they are already seeing a way to silence their conscience's voice, they are open to satan's suggestions and accept his help and support.

This satanic system condones every kind of unacceptable behavior, excuses every evil act and justifies every depravity. In this way, satan opposes a person to his own conscience, trying to show him that such perverted ways of thinking are valid and justifiable.

He deceives people making them think that good is evil and evil is good

One method satan uses to seduce people into evil is to suggest many and varied false proofs to persuade them to leave the true path, and his proposals are so intricate and elaborated with disingenuous logic that those who fail to look with the eyes of faith are easily convinced. They accept satan's proposals as truth and actually transform their behavior according to what they have been falsely led to believe.

We can find many instances of people who act incorrectly in daily life, having been led into such behavior by satan's deceptions. Because of his suggestions, for example, a person may come to regard a close friend as his enemy. Satan offers so much clear and detailed proof about his friend's ill-intentions that, the deceived person begins to suspect even his friend's well-intentioned behavior and looks for a hidden meaning behind his every word or action. He has fallen so far under satan's influence of and thinks so much about the suggestions satan has put into his mind that his friend can do nothing to alter his opinion, no matter what well-intentioned efforts he makes.

Sometimes satan makes the same suggestion, but in a totally opposite way. He deceives a person to consider as friends those who will harm him and draw him into evil. Despite clear evidences that a person is ill-intentioned, satan has an explanation for them all and so prevents the deceived individual from seeing the true nature of others' intentions. Satan presents some insignificant details and inflates them, making the deceived person believe that the other's intentions are actually benevolent.

Satan uses these tactics in every matter a person must deal in daily life. As a result, someone he has urged into evil is drawn into ever-greater error and prevented from avoiding the evils he has become immersed in. In reality, however, satan has become a close friend of this deceived person and drawn him closer to his own religious ideas and moral qualities. About this matter, the Qur'an says:

If someone shuts his eyes to the remembrance of the All-Merciful, We assign him a satan who becomes his bosom friend. They debar them from the path, yet they still think they are guided.(Surat az-Zukhruf: 36-37)

He uses insidious methods and urges people to be sly

To divert people from the right path and draw them into Hell with him, one of the most important tactics that satan resorts to is insidiousness—one of the most indispensable methods that he uses in his pitiless struggle against human beings. If he invited people to join him by revealing his true intentions, he wouldn't be successful. If he admitted how much he hates human beings and has been their enemy since the beginning of their history, how hard he has tried to deceive them and drag them with himself into the eternal pangs of Hell, then people would certainly beware of him and be saved from falling into his traps. For this reason, satan tries to mislead them by using lies, insincerity and deceitful tricks. He avoids acting in any way that would make them think that he is their enemy. He may even not openly suggest that they follow him, practice unseemly morality, do harm to themselves and others—and every time they have to choose between good and evil, that they act on the side of evil. In fact, these suggestions actually sum up satan's final goal. He always presents these actions to people as goodness, beauty and truth. He insinuates himself into their lives with methods of persuasion and sly cunning.

The Qur'an tells us that satan himself has spoken of this; that he will not approach people openly, but lies in ambush for them:

He [satan] said, "By Your misguidance of me, I will lie in ambush for them on your straight path. Then I will come at them, from in front of them and behind them, from their right and from their left. You will not find most of them thankful." (Surat al-A'raf: 16-17)

Satan has no direct influence on human beings, and so resorts to insidious methods to present people what is wrong as right and good as evil. In order to deceive, he gilds his words and tells them that the wrongs they commit are attractive and becoming. In the same way, he tries to make them foreswear habits that are good and beneficial by depicting them as unseemly. He makes attractive promises to them with regard to this earthly life, giving them groundless apprehensions about what is right. He tries to make the simplest things complicated and intractable and suggests that Allah's commands are difficult to keep. He makes them believe that worldly gain is easy and close at hand, but that the benefits of the next world are allegedly remote, imaginary promises. He observes human beings at every moment, watching for their deficiencies. He tries to catch them at their weak points and make them fall into his trap. He always promotes evil, wanting them to imitate him by adopting it. He sets his snares with all these suggestions, in unexpected ways and at unexpected times.

At times he makes open suggestions; most often he makes himself appear as a real friend to someone, as if he wanted the best for that person. Those deceived by satan's various lies gradually fall into error and depart from the true path. Having made friends with satan, they think that their unseemly moral behavior and attitudes do not matter, and so they persist in them.

He teaches people to do evil so that they will not get caught

One principle of this silent language that satan uses to call people to his own morality is that: Evil committed must be expertly concealed. This secret religion that satan teaches those under his influence to practice is based on the principle of never being found out. These people do not openly display unseemly moral qualities, but conceal them behind many intricate details. This system is very insidious; those who use this secret language can express themselves in a perfectly understandable way, but give no evidence of their evil intentions.

This silent language easily lets its users to recognize others who practice the same satanic morality. They know all the subtleties of the dialect they use; when they see the same "vocabulary" in others, they know that they are under the same satanic influence. Knowing this gives them the courage to practice their wayward morality unhesitatingly in the presence of these others, without feeling the need to hide it. They can show their true faces to those with whom they share a common understanding, but they keep their faces hidden in the presence of others.

The principle of not getting caught is designed to shroud the consciences of those who speak evil's silent language. Those to whom satan has taught this language have instilled in them the idea that for a person to be morally good, it is enough that he not do evil openly. For this reason, some people who speak this language shroud their consciences, care nothing about showing unseemly moral behavior, and go on practicing the insidious methods of this silent language. People around them cannot detect this evil morality, which is based on so many subtle details—and this permits them to see themselves as blameless in this matter.

He tries to influence people by debasing their human nature

Allah, the only ruler of everything on Earth, knows His creatures very well and the way of life that suits them best. Allah has created human beings to be happy and content, but only if they believe and practice the moral teachings of the Qur'an. "... Only in the remembrance of Allah can the heart find peace." (Surat ar-Ra'd: 28)

This truth is written in the Qur'an and applies to all human beings without exception. A person can live a good life in this world only if he draws near to the Lord Who created him and lives a life to gain His love and approval. Allah tells us in the Qur'an to use as our guide the nature He has created in us:

So set your face firmly towards the religion, as a pure natural believer, Allah's natural pattern on which He made humanity... (Surat ar-Rum: 30)

If they do not live their lives according to their nature and do not adopt this moral understanding, people will lead lives of anxious discontent. They won't be able to derive pleasure from the countless blessings that Allah has bestowed on humanity and will not be aware of the beauty surrounding them. As the Qur'an says, they will lead lives filled with difficulties: "But if anyone turns away from My reminder, his life will be a dark and narrow one and on the Day of Resurrection We will gather him blind." (Surah Ta-Ha: 124) They will be easily overcome by sadness, uneasiness, hopelessness and pessimism, and can find no solution to the problems they live with. Yet when they realize the situation they're in, they cannot find the source of the anxiety that dominates their lives nor how to find a remedy for it. The basis of this difficulty confronting individuals is the work of satan, the basic source of all evil. One of the methods he uses against human beings is to debase themselves, because satan knows that humans can be happy only if they live according to their human nature. So, by making them adopt a moral understanding and lifestyle contrary to their nature, he can bar them from happiness. Again, his own insidious methods lead people into error and prevent them from escaping from the traps they have fallen into. By calling them to practice a morality contrary to their nature, he makes false promises of happiness. According to the Qur'an, satan boasts that:

I will lead them astray and fill them with false hopes. I will command them and they will cut off cattle's ears. I will command them and they will change Allah's creation." Anyone who takes satan as his protector in place of Allah has clearly lost everything. (Surat an-Nisa': 119)

All these truths that Allah reveals in the Qur'an make it clear that human beings can be happy only if they live according to the moral teachings of the Qur'an and return to the nature that Allah has created in them. Otherwise—as we shall detail in due course—satan will draw a person not only into unhappiness in this world, but into suffering that will last for eternity.

He tries to deceive people by using the name of Allah

Satan knows that every evil thought whispered into the human heart will meet the voice of conscience commanding the truth. Given this situation, satan has devised a different order to hide his true identity and evil intentions. Sometimes he tries to make it seem that his suggestions are actually the voice of a person's conscience, by approaching them using the name of Allah.

Together with his minions, satan observes people to learn how they may be influenced and what they will react to. He directs them by being aware of their weak points and of which ideas confuse their minds. He deceives people in delicate matters of conscience by using religious values under the guise of auspiciousness. When he wants to tempt a person into some evil deed, he offers various alibis and excuses to show that the deed is right and legitimate. In this way, he tries to lead that person into a totally opposite form of "moral" behavior. The individual then uses satan's insincere excuses to defend to others the evil he has done.

Satan, on the other hand, tries to make believers think they are adequate, to get them to be content with some acts of worship they perform, and to find their efforts sufficient. He tries to convince them that they have a good moral character, that they do their best and that's the utmost they can accomplish. He strives to make them believe that it's enough if their hearts are pure, that Allah recognizes the sufficiency of the good intentions of their heart and that He would be pleased with them and thus try to drift them into insincerity. Satan tries to soften people's hearts and make them believe that they are well-intentioned enough and has superior moral qualities compared to those around them.

But no matter how convincing and realistic the way satan puts forth his excuses, a person acting according to his suggestions knows that his actions are incompatible with the moral teachings of the Qur'an. This is because everyone is able to distinguish between good and evil, thanks to the mercy of conscience Allah has created in His servants. In the Qur'an, Allah warns us about satan's traps:

O Humanity! Allah's promise is true. Do not let the life of this world delude you and do not let the deluder delude you about Allah. Satan is your enemy, so treat him as an enemy. He summons his party so they will be among the people of the Searing Blaze. (Surah Fatir: 5-6)

There's another way by which satan deceives human beings in the name of Allah: he tempts them to commit sins, promising that Allah will forgive them. Allah's mercy is infinite and He may forgive all His servants who repent and asks for forgiveness. But it is insincere to sin deliberately with the idea that "Allah will forgive me in any case." The heart of anyone who persists in such immoral behavior will gradually grow hard and unfeeling. And acting without the fear of Allah can draw such a person into even greater evil. In the Qur'an, Allah gives the example of a person who knowingly commits sins with the idea that Allah will soon forgive him, and He warns humans against such deceptions of satan:

An evil generation has succeeded them, inheriting the Book, taking the goods of this lower world, and saying, "We will be forgiven." But if similar goods come to them again, they still take them. Has not a covenant been made with them in the Book, that they should only say the truth about Allah and have they not studied what is in it? The Final Abode is better for those who believe. Will you not use your intellect? (Surat al-A'raf: 169)

Of course, as stated at the beginning of this book, all these stratagems that satan employs can influence only those without faith. For those who have made the Qur'an their guide, there is an obvious difference between the voice of satan and the voice of their conscience. People's conscience always inspires them to act according to the moral teachings of the Qur'an. And no matter how insidious the stratagems satan tries to hide behind, he always urges them to behave in ways that will not be pleasing to Allah. Therefore, a believer immediately perceives the difference between these two, takes refuge in Allah against satan's influence, and listens to the voice of his conscience.

But those without faith have no such clarity. For this reason, satan can exert over them whatever influence he wishes. In the Qur'an, Allah draws attention to the different influence satan makes on believers and unbelievers.

Stir up any of them you can with your voice and rally against them your cavalry and your infantry and share with them in their children and their wealth and make them promises! The promise of satan is nothing but delusion. (Surat al-Isra': 64)

He approaches human beings using both human and jinn demons

The Qur'an tells us that satan uses his minions in order to draw near to human beings. "... The demons inspire their friends to dispute with you..." (Surat al-An'am: 121) This shows us that satan is not a power that works on his own. The Qur'an tells us of the existence of demons from both humanity and from the jinn.

In this way We have appointed as enemies to every prophet demons from both humanity and from the jinn, who inspire each other with delusions by means of specious words – if your Lord had willed, they would not have done it, so abandon them and all they fabricate. (Surat al-An'am: 112)

Satan works in concert with human beings and the spirits that follow him, using them as vehicles to misguide other people. These individuals comply with satan's morality, making insincerity their guiding principle. They instill doubt and apprehension in the hearts of others in an attempt to divert them from the true path. In the Qur'an, Allah tells us of the insincere methods of these demons from both humanity and from the jinn. Refuge from their evil should be sought in the Lord.

Say: "I seek refuge with the Lord of humanity, the King of humanity, the God of humanity, from the evil of the insidious whisperer who whispers in people's breasts and comes from the jinn and from humanity." (Surat an-Nas: 1-6)

Another verse says that satan makes servants of these human beings and spirits who follow him. "… He said, I will take a certain fixed proportion of Your servants..." (Surat an-Nisa': 118) Individuals who become satan's servants do his will by constantly trying to distance people from the true path; they make it their duty to urge them toward evil. This activity of satan's minions is described in the Qur'an:

But as for their brothers, the visitors lead them further into error. And they do not stop at that! (Surat al-A'raf: 202)

The most obvious of these individuals who serve satan are called hypocrites in the Qur'an; they have sickness in their hearts rather than faith. All the moral depravity to be observed in a hypocrite's behavior will be examined in detail in the pages that follow: This depravity is the result of the dominance that satan holds over such people. These individuals use satan's insidious and secret methods and, like him, use their secret language to entice others into evil.

The Qur'an tells us that these hypocrites are seduced by satan's tactics and are overwhelmed with doubts:

They will call out to them, "Were we not with you?" They will reply, "Indeed you were. But you made trouble for yourselves and hung back and doubted and false hopes deluded you until Allah's command arrived. The deluder deluded you about Allah." (Surat al-Hadid: 14)

Satan aims to use these people to act in his name, to establish a mass of faithful followers and to lead them as he wishes, according to his ideals. Using these individuals, he wants to reach a wider mass of people with his suggestions. He wants them to speak with their own mouths the words he wishes them to say. He wants to keep his religion alive by instilling his own moral ideas into their morality. In this way, he won't frighten people because they will be unaware that he is instilling his religion into them, calling them to follow his path and making them his minions. And with their evil moral ideas, these people will draw others into the great error of satanic morality.

One single individual who adopts satan's religion will reach others around him and slowly invite them all to practice satanic morality. This single individual will make others adopt this false religion, until hundreds of people will become the ambassadors of satan. In this way, thousands of mouths will communicate satan's religion, thousands of bodies will present his morality and thousands of soldiers will divert people from the true path. Satan directs every soldier in his army at every moment and leads each of them to initiate a satanic activity.

This mass of minions is literally hypnotized by satan. Under his command, they are so faithful, obedient and disciplined that they take orders from no one else than satan, not even from their own consciences. Unaware of the painful end toward which they are being drawn, they defend satan and his religion throughout their lives. These people actually become satan's servants, his toys; they have surrendered to him their intellects, consciences, thoughts, wills, power of judgment and all their physical and mental functions. They finally act according to satan's will and start to live according to his ideas.

They do not fear Allah as they should and as a result, do not consider that the continual intimations coming into their minds are from satan. They believe these thoughts are their own and don't hesitate to put them into effect. And later, they adopt all these ideas just as satan has; they no longer need his suggestions to defend this religion. They defend it as much as he does and finally come to speak his silent language.

Everyone in this world is subject to the same testing. In this environment, therefore, satan tries to exert an effect not only on those who reject Allah, but also on believers. Some people say they have faith, but do not actually live it as they should; they do not totally submit themselves to Allah, using the Qur'an as a measure for everything they experience in life or living a good moral life out of fear of Allah. For this reason, such people are open to satan's intimations. Although they know how to oppose him and nullify his treacherous stratagems, they pay heed to what satan says.

They know the Qur'an and are well aware of the great harm satan can do to them, but do not consider this as carefully as they should. As a result, even while saying their prayers, they communicate satan's message in the attitudes they often display. Even while they are aware of their own mistaken attitudes and behavior, usually these people claim that they are faithful and morally upright and that they strenuously avoid satan and evil.

Satan makes these people believe that their good behavior and their avoidance of overt evil are enough. He makes them pay no attention to the evil they do in private and causes them to feel they don't need to avoid it. He tries to distance them from religious morality.

As a result of satan's stratagems, various characteristics come to light that are far removed from the ideal Muslim character. But there is only one Muslim character revealed by Allah in the Qur'an: This is the way that will please Allah, lead a person to the Garden and save him from Hell. Practicing just a portion of religious morality and assuming a character different from the Muslim ideal will draw a person unwittingly to Hell. Of course, if these people adopt the Qur'an as their guide and think according to what Allah has revealed, they may realize the situation they are in and be easily rescued from it. The Prophet (saas) warned believers in a hadith not to assist satan in any way:

"Do not help satan against your [Muslim] brother." (Sahih Bukhari)

In the following pages, we'll examine the various personalities that satan shapes with the silent—and secret—language of evil; we will see what kind of depraved behavior results from his influence over these people. For these people, this silent language has become a kind of way of life. We will show what kind of messages it sends and what these messages mean.

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